Using RSS to put a Wordpress or Twitter feed into Mediawiki (wikieducator)

Thanks

I must thank my friend & colleague Steph Day for working behind the scenes into finding Amit Agarwal's connection between Twitter and MediaWiki via Google Drive Developer, and proving it could be done.

WordPress

The RSS extension in MediaWiki allows you to feed from the WordPress RSS feed. Add the following to your MediaWiki page (but replace my WordPress blog with yours)

Twitter

This is much more complicated since in 2013 Twitter changed the way it allowed developers to access the Twitter Stream. An RSS feed unfortunately is not available, instead a JSON file is generated. However, using a bit of "magic" by creating a Google App allows you to convert the JSON file into an RSS feed which can then be accessed in MediaWiki.

When you get to the pop-up Google Apps Script choose Script as a Web App

If you want to get a wrapper for your feed refer to the Sample page/instruction links at the start of this post.

Some Notes:

Don't expect the RSS Feed to show older Tweets particularly for Search. After activating the gApp you may need to add a Tweet for it to appear in the panel.

Twitter Search does not necessarily return all the relevant Tweets in the Search. So in my classes I have had a lot of students post with my #vmvwiki hashtag and they have not shown up in the panel. Unfortunately this is what Twitter have done and in 2013 this killed the student use of Twitter as a viable communication tool for Social Media in the classroom.

Monday, December 23, 2013

This is really scarey stuff. as far as I can tell it is spread as an attachment which has a ".pdf.exe" extension which of course shows as a PDF as in its wisdom Microsoft hides extensions ( this has been since early windows days and was a well known way to spread viruses )

Anyway be very careful with this one as the only cure may be apart paying the ransom about us$200.

Saturday, August 24, 2013

A problem in Windows 8 is when you click on an image in Windows explorer it annoyingly loads it into the Win 8 photo viewer app.

To fix this:

go to Control Panel > Programs > Default Programs and select Set your default programs.Scroll down and click Windows Photo Viewer in the Programs list.Then, click 'Set this program as default' if you'd like the Viewer to open all the file types it can handle, or select the 'Choose default' options if you prefer to specify which file types it should open. Finish by clicking OK.

Thursday, August 15, 2013

Open Content, An Idea Whose Time Has Come

The initial focus of the Open Content Program is to make available all images of public domain artworks in the Getty’s collections. Roughly 4,600 high-resolution images of the Museum’s collection free to use, modify, and publish for any purpose.

According to Microsoft Win7 starter is unable to create an ad hoc network. Am trying to screen share an iPad with a laptop without 3G needed.

A quick search on Dr. Google reveals that the ad hoc network option is actually there in starter, but the link is missing. To set up an ad hoc network just click on start and in the box "Search programs and files" type "ad hoc".. this will bring up the wizard and away you go.

Thursday, April 18, 2013

""We-learning" embraces the simple and profound concept that any organization has a collection of knowledge and experience which should be shared. It respects the fact that the training department may, at most, have 5-10% of the knowledge needed and used in the company. And organizational learning is taking place on a real-time basis - always changing and becoming more valuable."

Found out today that if the PowerPoint is set to Kiosk mode (In Office 2010 buried in Slide Show > Set up slide show > Show slide type) then it will only display the first slide and clicking (or using arrows) to go to the next slide doesn't work